


Rocks and Water

by vanitashaze



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-02
Updated: 2010-07-02
Packaged: 2017-10-10 08:51:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/97860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitashaze/pseuds/vanitashaze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Mexico is hot, unyielding: a day at the beach, and when the stars come out her shoulders are burned red and peeling.</i> Or, Joni lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rocks and Water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jantalaimon](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=jantalaimon).



> Written for the [lifein1973 ficathon](http://community.livejournal.com/lifein1973/tag/ficathon%202008), for this prompt: _"Joni and her Mum, alternate ending to _1.4_, life in Mexico."_

Mexico is hot, unyielding: a day at the beach, and when the stars come out her shoulders are burned red and peeling. Mum complains about the heat and dust; the women who frown at their bone-colored skin; the men who hang around the bar and make obscene gestures as Joni passes. The first time, she tries to tells her mother not to worry, that this is something that happens all the time, but the words grind against her teeth like breeze-brought sand, and instead she pulls into herself, not meeting their eyes. One of the men asks her, "how much? How much?" and her mum flies into a rage.

Here the _fearguiltrage_, everything that Joni had thought she'd trampled into the muddy Manchester dirt - it rises in her throat. A man smiles at her, and her heart jumps, _Does he know what I was? Can he tell?_ And then, angrily, she stomps it down. Fuck him, she thinks, just fuck him. But in the back of her mind, there's a mantra going:

_Does he know? _

_Does he know?_

"Fuck you," she says to the old man who stops her on the street.

He grins, teeth rotted like twists of wood. "How much?"

 

*

 

At first the water made her sick to drink it. She'd known about the dangers, of course, had read the guidebook she got from the natty little stand at the airport, but she had ignored them, because she had survived Stephen Warren, she had run from him and lived, and that _meant_ something, damn it, even if she wasn't sure what.

 

*

 

"I am not a whore," she says, red lips obscene in her compact mirror. "I am not afraid, and I'm not a whore."

 

*

 

She still gets dreams, sometimes. DCI Tyler below her, thick and hot between her legs; lowering herself down, starting to move. His eyes blurring in and out of focus. The chill of the handcuffs when she reaches down to check, that they are secure. His rough, unwashed sheets. The slap of flesh in the silent apartment, her thighs pumping. Up down. Up down. Hot, wet, release. Dismount.

(When she came to him, eventually, he's still hurting, still angry. _Get out_, his every moment says. _Get out_, and she wonders if he's trapped in something too.

"What will you do?" he asks. The words are clipped, impersonal.

"Me and my Mum are going on a trip," she says, and she hadn't thought of it before but now she knows, yes, this is what they'll do. "A long way away from people like him."

"Where are you going to go?"

"I dunno," she says, meeting his gaze steadily. "I heard Mexico's nice." At least her voice doesn't shake. He half-smiles, and makes to speak, but in a flash of understanding she knows it's not enough, not enough to make him care, because Warren will come after her and her Mum and he'll cry and move on, and so she says the only other thing she can think of: "I'm pregnant. It's yours."

For a moment, she thinks he's going to say something like _that's great_.

"I'll help you," he blurts instead.)

 

*

 

Mexico is whitewashed houses and children playing in the street, sweat that sticks her hair to the back of her neck. A few months after she and her Mum find an apartment to rent, she chops off all the hair she can reach, and has her Mum trim the rest, horror aside. It looks good, actually - like the women in the old black-and-whites, all those crime dramas and romantic comedies, lovely in their starched dresses and nylons and the cigarette tucked between their dark, full lips.

 

*

 

The doctor nods at her, mustache wobbling, and tucks his brown hands back into his pockets. "_Si_," he says, and then: "Yes."

Really, she shouldn't have been so surprised.

 

*

 

"A milit'ry man," she tells her Mum, voice hushed. She's practiced this - in the bathroom mirror, on walks, at night when Mum is asleep. By now, she almost believes it. "I met him after shows. He loved me. We were going to get married."

Her Mum purses her lips, but doesn't pull away, and when she speaks her voice is almost wistful. "What was his name, luv?"

_Sam_, Joni thinks, _Sam_ -

"His name was Stephen," she says.

Her Mum reaches across and puts her hand on Joni's belly. The gold of her wedding ring flashes in the Mexico sun. "God will understand," Mum says, and nods, as if she's trying to convince herself that it's true.

 

*

 

Later, holding back her hair as she retches over the toilet, her Mum hums quietly with contentment.

"That'll be the morning sickness starting, I expect," she says.

 

*

 

All of Warren's people - his rent-boys, rent-girls, bouncers and bent cops and toys - they all dreamed of a better life. A family, they would say, or an honest job, or a lover who wouldn't leave twenties with the bloke at the door. When you stop fucking people over for money, they said, everything changes. It gets better.

Joni gets a job at an American newsstand, selling the _New York Times_; the _Washington Post_; the _London Times_. Her days are spent talking with tourists and flirting with the delivery men, throwing up every hour or so in the alley across the street. Pregnancy hits her hard; she has kept her body lithe and supple for so long, but now she feels fleshy and pink, straining at her skin like a ripe fruit. To keep herself from thinking about it, she reads _Vogue_ and sips mango juice behind the counter. The clank of her hand against the glass is always startling. For her first day of work, her Mum went into a pawn shop and bought her a ring.

"It's just better this way," her Mum said, as she worked it onto Joni's bloated finger.

 

*

 

A week after her daughter is born, DI Tyler sends her a telegram.

_WARREN CHARGED WITH RACKETEERING AND FIRST DEGREE MURDER STOP PRISON STOP IT'S OVER._

A few minutes later, her Mum comes in to see what all the fuss is about.

"Joni," she cries, and Joni lets fly with another dish and collapses into her Mum's open arms.

"It's not over," she sobs. "It's not over, it's not over-"

"What's not over?" her Mum asks, gnarled hands stroking her hair. "What's not over, Joni? What's wrong?"

 

*

 

What's ahead won't be easy, Joni knows. They're outsiders - working-class refugees. Her father is dead, and her child's father never really existed in the first place. But ignore all that, and this place might eventually start to look like home.

 

*

 

Joni's washing baby bottles in the kitchen sink. Behind her, her Mum coos over the baby, barely a year old.

"I want to send something to Carol's father," Joni says suddenly. "Photographs and things."

Her Mum frowns. "But Joni, luv... he's dead."

Joni wipes her hands on the dishrag, silent for a moment. "There's family," she says, finally, and then: "Stephen left other people behind besides me."

 

*

 

"Smile for Mummy," Joni says, and raises the camera. The baby shakes her rattle grumpily. She has been outfitted in a little red jumper and matching headband - a birthday present, Joni's mum had said, and kissed Joni on the cheek. Her lips were warm, leaving behind a thin film of lipstick, and a small piece of Joni's new life slotted neatly into place.

She is _happy_ now, she reminds herself. She has a mum and a baby and Mexico.

"Smile, Carol," she says, and the camera flashes, again and again.

 

*

 

She gets the pictures back a week later. "That one is perfect," her Mum says, and Joni slips it out of the paper envelope from the photo shop and reaches for another, front blank. This afternoon she will fill it out, her handwriting steady and clear - _Sam Tyler, 351 Chestnut St. Manchester NH. 03101_ \- and drop it in the post-box on the corner.

For a moment, she pauses to look at the photograph they've chosen. It really is perfect. Carol looks like an angel: little girl with a shock of blonde hair, tiny lips as red as her jumper, clutching her stuffed clown. The thing's fabric grin is almost manic; its floppy lengths are squeezed into segments by Carol's pudgy little fingers. The baby stares straight into the camera with a private little smile, and her eyes are light but fathomless, like a line of mirrors, stretching away into eternity.


End file.
